Quotes & Sayings About Lyrics And Music

His eyes are cold and restless
His wounds have almost healed
And she'd give half of Texas
Just to change the way he feels
She knows his love's in Tulsa
And she knows he's gonna go
Well it ain't no woman flesh and blood
It's that damned old rodeo


Well it's bulls and blood
It's dust and mud
It's the roar of a Sunday crowd
It's the white in his knuckles
The gold in the buckle
He'll win the next go 'round
It's boots and chaps
It's cowboy hats
It's spurs and latigo
It's the ropes and the reins
And the joy and the pain
And they call the thing rodeo


She does her best to hold him
When his love comes to call
But his need for it controls him
And her back's against the wall
And it's So long girl I'll see you
When it's time for him to go
You know the woman wants her cowboy
Like he wants his rodeo — Garth Brooks

Life is the bad
with all the good.
The deadly sharks
with the beautiful sea stars.
The gigantic waves
with the sand castles.
The licorice
with the lemon and lime.
The loud lyrics
with the rhythm of the music.
The liver disease
with the love of a father and son.
It's life.
Sweet, beautiful,
wind on your face,
air in your lungs,
kisses on your lips.
life. — Lisa Schroeder

We're going to sing about things that matter to us. The balancing act is to present these ideas but also make the music exciting and sort of fun enough that even if you're not paying attention to the lyrics, you might still like the songs anyway. That's the idea. — Conor Oberst

Music is exciting and easy to enjoy, the rhythm and voice.
It does not need interpretation. That is why it is called the Universal Language. — Ellen J. Barrier

And my head told my heart
"Let love grow"
But my heart told my head
"This time no
This time no — Mumford & Sons

Instead of singing in the shower, I would write out the lyrics of my favourite songs, the ink would turn the water blue or red or green, and the music would run down my legs. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Yet when, one day, standing on the outskirts of Yokohama town, bristling with its display of modern miscellanies, I watched the sunset in your southern sea, and saw its peace and majesty among your pine-clad hills, - with the great Fujiyama growing faint against the golden horizon, like a god overcome with his own radiance, - the music of eternity welled up through the evening silence, and I felt that the sky and the earth and the lyrics of the dawn and the dayfall are with the poets and idealists, and not with the marketmen robustly contemptuous of all sentiment, - that, after the forgetfulness of his own divinity, man will remember again that heaven is always in touch with his world, which can never be abandoned for good to the hounding wolves of the modern era, scenting human blood and howling to the skies. — Rabindranath Tagore

I like to write music. And I think exploring with lyrics and figuring out how to make complete songs is fun. I think I have a take on it. I don't know if it's great, but it's an interesting take. It's original. — Stone Gossard

You see, there's some blues for folks ain't never had a thing, and that's a sad blues ... but the saddest kind of blues is for them that's had everything they ever wanted and has lost it, and knows it won't come back no more. Ain't no sufferin' in this world worse than that; and that's the blue we call 'I Had It But It's All Gone Now. — Ken Grimwood

Cause we're the here and now generation. 24/Seven — Big Time Rush

Adam does most of the work when it comes to videos and he basically does the same as I do with the lyrics. The videos are his visual interpretations of our music. — Maynard James Keenan

I write my lyrics into the computer and I hum my music into the dictaphone. — Sebastian Bach

When hip-hop was born she had no commercial home, and was an invention of beautiful creativity. Born from a beautiful struggle, today she is mostly a 'ratchet' bitch spitting nonsense from her pimp's mansion. — T.F. Hodge

No matter what I do, my songs come out in a certain style, and if that sounds like Dead Kennedys, then there's probably a reason for it. Don't forget, I wrote most of those songs, music and lyrics. — Jello Biafra

I've always wanted my lyrics to say something meaningful and, you know, you always want to tell a message with your art. So yes, as I continue to write music, I will write about things that are real and things that I feel aren't written about a lot. — Hayley Kiyoko

I am a big Brian Eno fan - the first few Brian Eno records are just absolute gibberish and he came up with a lot of lyrics by writing down loads and loads of random sentences and streams, and I find meaning in that music, even though he'd probably say it's absolute gibberish. — Jay Watson

You'll also need to invest in yourself with the kind of promo that targets your specific audience to help build that word of mouth. Most importantly, believe in what you're doing and in your music and lyrics. — Eliot Lewis

When I drive to work, I listen to thuggish rap at a very loud volume, even though the lyrics are degrading to women and offend me to my core. I am mortified by my music choices. — Roxane Gay

I was a kid who got picked on in school, and now the guys beating up those kids were wearing red caps and using my music to fuel that aggression. But if they listen to the lyrics, the aggression is targeted at them. — Fred Durst

I used to listen to music from the frosting down. As a word nerd, lyrics are really important to me, and then the melody. Playing in the Rock*A*Teens was the first time I ever heard music from the bottom up. I was hearing songs I'd heard a million times on oldies radio, and I'd be like, "Wow, listen to what the bass is doing!" When I was first singing in bands, I'd just get out there with my machete, wildly whacking away at the foliage. But you learn how to listen. When I feel I'm doing it right, it's 90% listening and 10% output. It's not "look what I can do!" — Kelly Hogan

I couldn't listen to music with lyrics for the first few months after the brain surgery, because they were too complex and disturbing. So I listened to a lot of classical music. I didn't really want to read, either, so I listened to books on tape or watched movies. I also re-taught myself all of my childhood piano pieces. It helped me repair my brain. — Rosanne Cash

Droplets of yes and no, in an ocean of maybe. — Faith No More

Country music and the world will miss George Jones. He was someone who set a high standard in our industry for great music and lyrics that tapped into the emotions of the human heart at a very deep level. His music has touched the lives of country music lovers for over five decades. My prayers are with his family and I pray for the repose of his soul. May you rest in peace, brother. — Collin Raye

That was how we spoke, my mother and I: in puns and games and rhymes. In, you might say, lyrics. This was our tragedy. We were language's magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny. We were tinpan alleycats, but the gift of music had been withheld. We could not sing along, though we always knew the words. Still, defiantly, we roared our tuneless roars, we fell off the high notes and were trampled by the low ones. And if bitter ices were the consequence, well, there were worse fates in the world than that. — Salman Rushdie

I used to play guitar for myself and write lyrics and listen to different styles of music. — Rokia Traore

One of the things that's influenced me musically was my experience at Brown University. I was surrounded by musicians that I really admired, and felt challenged to come up with music, lyrics, and recordings that stood up to the expectations of those musicians and myself. — Lisa Loeb

I love knowing that people are connecting to my lyrics, my music and me. — Lee DeWyze

It's more like you write what comes to you ... You try to reflect the mood of the songs. Take 'Rearviewmirror', we start off with the music and it kinds of propels the lyrics. It made me feel like I was in a car, leaving something, a bad situation. There's an emotion there. I remembered all the times I wanted to leave ... — Eddie Vedder

Sometimes it's nice to be able to reflect on the music itself and then write lyrics that I feel anyone can relate to. It's not my dreaming tree that is dead. The feeling of a loss of hope is universal. There are moments that we've all felt a little bit of it, so I don't think it is something that is too hard to identify with. — Dave Matthews

Human nature provides the lyrics, and we novelists just compose the music. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I'm very passionate about music and was excited to see that the majority of readers loved the inclusion of lyrics. — Colleen Hoover

Maybe I'm overcast. And maybe all my lucks washed down the drain. — Switchfoot

With 'Light,' I collaborated with a lot of different producers and musicians I respected, and we all wrote and worked on material which I then took to an old-school producer, David Kahne, and we put it all together. The lyrics came first - they were written before the music. — Matisyahu

While you're singing something romantic, I can't get the lyrics to 'Love and Marriage' out of my head, and that tune always reminds me of the jingle from Jeopardy. — E.A. Bucchianeri

I want to touch people's lives with my music and my lyrics. — Romeo Santos

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends. — Shel Silverstein

I write for myself; I'm trying to keep myself interested in the music. But at the same time, I want to make the songs relatable in a way; I want to keep melodies pretty simple and the lyrics open-ended so that people could maybe relate them to their own life in different ways. Something for everybody to have a piece of. — Mac DeMarco

Concert pianists get to be quite chummy with dead composers. They can't help it. Classical music isn't just music. It's a personal diary. An uncensored confession in the dead of night. A baring of the soul. Take a modern example. Florence and the Machine? In the song 'Cosmic Love,' she catalogs the way in which the world has gone dark, distorting her, when she, a rather intense young woman, was left bereft by a love affair. 'The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out. — Marisha Pessl

We all write the music, and then Mark and Tom write the lyrics. — Travis Barker

The visual side of being a performer or in a band is, to me, as important as the music. I know not everyone shares that same opinion, but when I'm writing songs or working on lyrics or coming up with an idea, I think about videos as I'm in the studio. If I had all the money in the world, I would have the most amazing videos ever, you know? You're saying grandiose, and big; if the song warrants it, I try to push the visuals as far as I can. — Tamaryn

Well the artists that inspire me were, first of all I would say Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, John Holt, Alton Ellis, Errol Dunkley, Delroy Wilson and Dennis Brown you know. They have unique voice and sweet melody and you know, good lyrics those time yeh. The music was very nice in that time still seen, because you find that even the musical part, the musicians concentrate more on the melody than everything, more than how they concentrate on the money that time you Know — Gregory Isaacs

The '60s was a magical time in the music business. So much creativity and talent. I think a lot of it came from the fact that we had grown up before rock n' roll. We listened to all the great songwriters and big bands, songs with great lyrics and melodies. I think that really influenced everybody. — Frankie Valli

Tristan was the soundtrack of my summer. The beat I walked to. The melody I breathed in and out. The lyrics I lived by. — Jessica Brody

It was my kind of song: fast and fun and exuberant,the lyrics tumbling out almost faster than my ears could follow them,some times rhyming,sometimes not ... — Anthony Rapp

On the issue of censorship of pornography and rock music, do you see that as a religious issue, too?
Yes, I do. Incidentally, I don't like rock music. I never have liked it. I have never understood it, and I can't hear the lyrics. I think that most people can't hear them either. I'm still stuck with Chopin and Beethoven and Bach, and all those old ones. The whole point is, I feel that everyone who wants to say anything, do anything, should be able to say anything or do anything, within the limits of not hurting another person. And I don't see how rock music hurts anybody, or I don't see that pornography hurts anybody. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I got into songwriting because I'm not very good at communicating sometimes, just my true words, so music was always my way of expressing myself and being able to put things into lyrics that I couldn't say necessarily in my everyday life. — LIZ

Sometimes when I write lyrics there are images in them, usually on a quite simplistic level, like colors. But most often music comes first and then later I sit down with visual people and we chat about what we want to do. I don't look at myself as a visual artist. I make music. — Bjork

There was a lot that was tricky about playing with [Thelonious Monk]. It's a musical language where there's really no lyrics. It's something you feel and you're hearing. It's like an ongoing conversation. You really had to listen to this guy. Cause he could play the strangest tempos, and they could be very in-between tempos on some of those compositions. You really had to listen to his arrangements and the way he would play them. On his solos, you'd really have to listen good in there. You'd have to concentrate on what you were doing as well. — Roy Haynes

I write music to both the situations and the lyrics in plays. — Jerome Kern

If you take text and image and you put them together, the multiple readings that are possible in either poetry or in something visual are reduced to one specific reading. By putting the two together, you limit the possibilities. Text and image don't always work together in the way music and song lyrics become part of each other. — Richard Hell

Regarding The Music Man, Jay Nordlinger wrote: The Music Man (for which Willson also wrote the lyrics) is an astonishing creation. It came in a spurt of brilliance. It is shot through with originality, verve, and-why not go all the way?-genius. People love it, can't get enough of it, can't stop performing it-and they are not wrong. For closing in on a half- century now, The Music Man has been performed continually, in every American city, town, and village, and in other parts of the world as well, not excluding Peking. — Meredith Willson

Cause when I hear your name I can not stop cheesing
I love you so much that my heart stops beating when you're leaving
And I'm grieving and my heart starts bleeding
Life without you has no goddamn meaning — Various

Acting and making music are quite complementary. Acting relies on someone else's writing and direction; writing music or lyrics doesn't. But they are both creative and personal in completely different ways. — Josephine De La Baume

I've always felt like my music would stand for itself and I would stand for myself. So I've kept my music a little bit esoteric, and I've kept the lyrics a little aloof. I try to say something important, but I don't necessarily preach. — Kenna

You float like a feather," sings Radiohead, "In a beautiful world." I've listened several times to the Radiohead songs, because it was nice of Raymond to say he heard a bit of them in what I sang. I'm not sure I hear it myself, but I am pleased and touched. Sometimes that's what you need, just a quick casual word of knowledgeable encouragement. Radiohead reminds me a little of the songs in Garden State soundtrack. Now, that's a soundtrack. They were all songs that Zach Braff liked, so he put them in his movie. And there's that beautiful moment near the beginning where Natalie Portman hands him the headphones and she watches him listen to the song and she smiles her huge, innocent Natalie Portman smile. — Nicholson Baker

I don't want to feel you die,
but if that's the way that God has planned you
Well, I'll put pennies on your eyes.
And it will go away, see?
You've only lived a minute of your life.
I must be dreaming ...
Is someone calling me? No ...
I think I hear a voice,
They're outside the door! — Alice Cooper

When I was younger, I was able to write with music playing in the background, but these days, I can't. I find it distracting. Even when the music is just instrumental or has lyrics in a language I don't understand, the clash between the voices in my head and the song can be very disorienting. — Daniel Alarcon

Or maybe memories are like karaoke - where you realize up on the stage, with all those lyrics scrawling across the screen's bottom, and with everybody clapping at you, that you didn't even know the lyrics to your all-time favourite song. Only afterwards, when someone else is up on stage humiliating themselves amid the clapping and laughing, do you realize that what you liked most about your favourite song was precisely your ignorance of its full meaning - and you read more into it than maybe existed in the first place. I think it's better not to know the lyrics to your life. — Douglas Coupland

You say: 'Oh, please forgive'
You say: 'Oh, live and let live.'
But sorry doesn't help us.
Sorry will not save us.
Sorry is just a word you find so easy to say (so you say it anyway).
Sorry doesn't help us.
Sorry won't protect us.
Sorry won't undo all the good gone wrong. — Morrissey

Soul lyrics, soul music came at about the same time as the civil rights movement, and it's very possible that one influenced the other. — Ahmet Ertegun

There's no difference between lyrics and poetry. Words are words. The only difference is the people who are in academic positions and call themselves poets and have an academic stance. They've got something to lose if they say it's all poetry; if there's not music to it, and you have to wear a certain kind of checkered shirt or something like that. It's all the same. Lyrics are lyrics, poetry is poetry, lyrics are poetry, and poetry is lyrics. They are interchangeable to me. — Van Morrison

I used to dream, and I used to vow;
I wouldn't dream of it now. — Morrissey

I really enjoy writing lyrics, I enjoy harmonies and I enjoy hearing the organic side of production because I have to do so much non- organic for a living for other artists, it's just a break for me, for my ears and it confuses people that think my music is supposed to sound like the stuff I do for my day job, but that's just people that don't know me. — Butch Walker

Now this might disturb you, but I find I'm OK by myself;
and I don't need you or your benevolence to make sense. — Morrissey

It's so funny because if you tweet your lyrics and then you hear it in a song next week, you're like, 'Hey I had that same idea.' I'm very secretive with my music. We have to send emails password protected. Because once that song gets out, you aren't selling that thing. — Ester Dean

Writing music and lyrics, you tend to become a control freak - sitting alone in your room with a bare light bulb over your head, writing communist manifestos. — Jason Robert Brown

It's ok to say you've got a weak spot,you don't always have to be on top.
Better to be hated then loved(x3) for what you're not. — Marina And The Diamonds

Sometimes when I'm writing I'll play Cole Porter, just because the rhythms and the lyrics are so perfect that it's like having a smart partner in the room. I have a huge collection of music that I listen to when I'm writing, and I also prepare a lot of music before I start directing. I put it all onto an iPod that I have with me on the set. It's helpful to the actors, because for an emotional scene, I'll play it and say, this is how it feels, to keep us in the zone. — Nancy Meyers

I woke up the Following morning with the Kings of Leon telling me that "my sex was on fire." I shut off my alarm and that's when all of the memories of the previous night came rushing back. — Kristen Middleton

I'm very honest in my music and I'm often asked to explain the lyrics; as an introvert, I find that quite hard. And I always wear high heels on stage, which can be painful. — Natasha Bedingfield

There are more than enough
to fight and oppose;
why waste good time
fighting the people you like? — Morrissey

The things I see every day inspire my sound and lyrics, like certain people and situations that stick out in my mind. There are also certain musicians I love whose music and styles inspire me. — Birdy

Making lyrics feel natural, sit on music in such a way that you don't feel the effort of the author, so that they shine and bubble and rise and fall, is very, very hard to do. Whereas you can sit at the piano and just play and feel you're making art. — Stephen Sondheim

I bet all I had on a thing called love; guess in the end it wasn't enough. And it's hard to watch you leave right now; I'm gonna have to learn to let you go somehow. — Carrie Underwood

Folk music usually has an emphasis on the lyrics and melody. And those lyrics are usually relevant in some way. And it's populist in scope, which is also true of Bad Religion. So it's more meant to draw some parallels between the two. And I think even my voice and my delivery can be thought of as a little bit folky. — Greg Graffin

Most people think its sex, money, and drugs but Hip-Hop is about lyrics, storytelling, and everybody having a different style. That's just another idea of beautiful, being yourself and creating music that represents you and what you like. — Rapsody

Obviously, the music and lyrics are in me, but if I let myself get in my own way, I do. I empty out and let it come, and then the music spirits take over. — Joan Jett

A good rock band is like a great lover. Their rhythms simultaneously jolt and calm you. They know when and where to tease you to make it feel the best, how to draw from you the ultimate pleasure. — Tom Leveen

I think you can have the greatest lyrics in the world and if it doesn't have the best tune in the world it will suck. I mean if the music wasn't important it would just be a poem. — Julian Cope

Two people, two hands, and two songs, in this case "Big Shot" and "Bette Davis Eyes." The lyrics of the two songs provided no commentary, honest or ironic, on the proceedings. They were merely there and always underfoot, the insistent gray muck that was pop culture. It stuck to our shoes and we tracked it through our lives. — Colson Whitehead

I could never be your god
And I don't even think I want the job anymore — Stone Sour

I'm tired again, I've tried again, and now my heart is full.
And I just can't explain ... so I won't even try to. — Morrissey

To all companies please stop using Xmas songs and inserting your own lyrics. Write your own music. I am boycotting you until you stop. — Bill Engvall

My music and lyrics became an extension of this Indian philosophy. — Gary Wright

Way back in the day, when I first started and had delusions of adequacy as a cartoonist, I would listen to music. When I switched to a career as a writer, I would try to listen to music, but if the songs had lyrics they would get in the way of the words I was trying to write. So I switched to listening to purely instrumental pieces. — Alan Moore

Easy come, easy go,
That's just how you live, oh,
Take, take, take it all,
But you never give.
Should've known you was trouble
From the first kiss,
Had your eyes wide open.
Why were they open?
Gave you all I had and you tossed it in the trash,
You tossed it in the trash, you did.
To give me all your love is all I ever asked, 'cause
What you don't understand is
I'd catch a grenade for ya
Throw my hand on a blade for ya
I'd jump in front of a train for ya
You know I'd do anything for ya
Oh, oh, I would go through all of this pain,
Take a bullet straight through my brain!
Yes, I would die for ya, baby,
But you won't do the same. — Bruno Mars

So when you're talking about lyrics in the context of music, it's not just about what the words mean, and what you were thinking about when you wrote it. It's not cognitive in that same way. It's almost like music turns words into touch, which is hard to describe, like the feeling of your shirt on your back. It's a pretty delicate thing to try to put into words. You just feel it. — Mirah

I took a road that wasn't the road, but it was something I chose and that's fine. — Tom Rosenthal

We worked very hard to make the lyrics suit the music. I can't, like Elton John, for example, compose by lyrics. Elton has a great talent for that. Whatever you give him, including your questions, he composes in half an hour and makes a great song out of it. — Rick Wright

Music is also one of the great heart openers. Sometimes, you hear the lyrics of a song and you dance, laugh, smile, or perhaps even cry. — Michael Franti

Do you remember the fundraiser buffet for the senator at the Yacht Club?" ... "I'd forgotten something in my car so I was outside when you arrived. I saw you driving too fast with the top down and the music too loud. You were belting out the lyrics like you didn't care who was listening. Then I watched you use the rearview mirror to fix yourself up so you'd look respectable, and when you were all spit-polished and perfect, you gave the mirror the finger."
She remembered. "You asked me out on our first date that night. — Shannon Stacey

I don't know if it's my music, my lyrics, my sound, and knowing the music business the way I do-all I can say is, my career has lasted way longer than I expected. — Barry White

What about Monday? That could be our one day we look at things the same way, and wear funny shoes. — Kevin Dalton

I see the world, it makes me puke,
But then I look at you and know,
that somewhere there's a someone who can soothe me. — Morrissey

Just look at what is right in front of you. People don't do that. They see what they expect to see, what they want to see, what conventional wisdom tells them to see. They only hear the music and not the lyrics of human events. — Vincent Bugliosi

We may be lost stars in an ocean of constellations on a dark night but do remember we both belong to the same sky. I breathe the same air that you breathe, we both look at the same luminosity above us. You are the music and I am the lyrics. — Elizabeth E. Castillo

If I had some of Jesus' tools, I'd build a big house that has no rules. And a bed that's big enough for 13 babies, and me & Miss Olivia Brown. — Kevin Dalton

They keep you doped with religion, and sex, and T.V.
And you think you're so clever and classless and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see — John Lennon

Again, I lay awake, and I cried because of waste. — Morrissey

It's very much a piece of myself when I write a song. I don't mean to say it's very personal, like the lyrics mean something personal to me. When I write a song, that's my taste in music - my taste in chord progressions and melodies. — Zooey Deschanel